DISQUS

If the center is Don, the season was disappointing.
If the center is Peggy, it wasn't.
If the center is Pete, I need a highball.

When was he looking for work? Hot rods were pretty well known by the 60's--that scene looked like mid 50's.
I think he went from Hope Lange to Love Reign O'er Me to the stables.
Goddamit, Weiner--would a transition kill you? This is AMC, remember?

"Hi, Christina. Hi, Christina's rack."

Though it's nice to see that Bryan Batt isn't Poor Sad Sal.

Well, THAT ended.
So, "The Prisoner" is set in the Area 51 base housing. No American Portmeirion?

"the destroyer Joseph F. Kennedy?"
(May be a quoted slip. They were all on edge back then.)

"My Dyckman seed? Being raised by some slob in Queens?"

So it's Duck going out the window . . .

I think I saw this script in about 3 Rod Serling scripts.

The guys are all running around like the Brooks Brothers chorus boys in H2S. Maybe they can all be understudies.

And when did Mark Moses turn into Gig Young?

The Max Fischer Players present "The Seven-Up's".
Or is it "Cops and Robbers"?

Don/Dick's getting a half mil from the sale. If he does go Elvis, Betty gets the money, and his conscience is salved. And Betty can wear her boots ALL THE TIME.
If Dick's not officially dead, he can head up the coast in time to work at the Firehouse with Gossage. Except no one would believe that someone like Gossage could exist.

So Betty set up Sara Beth so she can disdain her.
Her father's nuts. She wants that jardinaire(sp) that would make a High Victorian sick.
And Don becomes more human in direct proportion to the distance he is from her.
I see a pattern. "The Shrike"?

And . . . we're crossing back into Sirkland, with Mrs. Draper, the Prophet of Contentment.

Maybe Don's going Flitcraft, but as Dick Whitman. Hell, it's California--he can be a Congressman for a while.

So, gin is like spinach for Duck?

Sal is about to levitate through blinking.

The theme music from "Rome"? or what?

Young Herman Kahn protege, talking about MIRV's. Same as the articles in Popular Science, that I read when I was 12. No wonder my retirement plan was nuclear war for so long.

"LIttle girl, don't get any ideas!" (so she hasn't had one in years!)

Whew. Thought Joy's spine was going to light up.

Want plot? Watch "The Days of the Week". Ditto for dialogue. I don't care anymore. Tableaux vivants based on the ad pages of LIFE and LOOK--with something a little sad around the eyes, like they've been sitting there a bit too long.
This is Sirkland; they are all staring into the abyss, and looking damn fine doing it.
I keep hoping Don will come one morning and find Hope Lange manning the desk at his door, white gloves peeping out of her purse.

Next week? "Duck's off!"

He's a Jesuit, remember?
They're all straight percentage players, who know there's no such thing as an honest house game.
Except for Pascal's Wager.

Misdirection: Despite the two explicit references to Gregory Peck, Don's real referrent is William Holden, who embodied the man who said things confidently that he was trying desperately to believe, and who was married to Grace Kelly in a picture, and for a few months during its making. See him in "Executive Suite", singlehandedly trying to save the soul of a company from the devil Frederic March-- a furniture company, whose products deservedly fill Salvation Army stores.

In any case, Robert Morse's plus-fours sent this weeks' ep straight to Oz.
Unsurpassable, unless he starts chanting "Groundhogs! Groundhogs!"

Not sure why everyone seems to think of 1960 as the Dawn of a New Age, with everyone facing the Light in the East. Must be those piles of old Lifes and Looks in the summer place. A look at all those novels written by copywriters don't exactly paint a bright picture, and iconic figures like Howard Gossage were hardly the rule--that would be Rosser Reeves. It was Nixon's decade, not Kennedy's.

That having been said, the occasional melodrama jars badly with the near perfect mise en scene. I can understand Peggy not knowing she's pregnant--but not for nine months. Or Don's Monte Cristo bit--it may be hyperdrama, but not everyone can do what Sirk can do.

I enjoyed the wrap party--about the only time I've seen these actors having a good time since ep 1.

“One never knows how loyalty is born.”

Pete finds out how the Alpha dog alphas. Even if he doesn't, it's another great cryptic line for Cooper. I swear they cast the show around Robert Morse.
Saddest orgy ever. I wanted so to see Edith Prickley Jr. get lucky: "I believe in MIRACLES . . . "
And WEHT Kristen Schaal? Did she quit to follow the Conchords full time?

The moment that clicked for me was the silent ending with him and his chart. Everyone is under suspicion--the name of a neat CBS cop show, BTW, from a few years back. Cop tries to prove her fugitive partner wasn't crooked. He shows up a few times, just long enough to leave an impression that maybe he IS a bit crooked--but their precinct is a bit nest of vipers as well.
But ep 2 seems to be laying off that vibe. It's also trying to divert attention from the suspicion arc by giving a neat mystery and its solution in 45 minutes.